‘The Child Is Father of the Man’

Do the Attitudes of the Young Charles Darwin Help Us Understand His Later Theorizing?

Childhood is the most vital element in a person’s development. With this principle in mind, it may be illuminating to read of the attitudes of Charles Darwin in childhood.

Childhood is the most vital element
in a person’s development. The Jesuits used to say, ‘Give me a child for the first
seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.’1 They
knew that by the time a child had reached seven, his character would largely be
set and, even at that tender age, you could ‘see’ the man. Thus they invested
a lot of time and effort into ensuring that Roman Catholic teaching was instilled
into the young mind.

With this principle in mind, it may be
illuminating to read of the attitudes of Charles Darwin in childhood.

In
their excellent biography of Darwin,2 Desmond and Moore quote from
contemporary sources about him thus:

‘Inventing deliberate
falsehoods became a regular method of seeking the spotlight … He would still
do anything at school “for the pure pleasure of exciting attention and surprise,”
and his cultivated “lies … gave [him] pleasure, like a tragedy.” He
told tall tales about natural history, reported strange birds, and boasted of
being able to change the colour of flowers. Once he invented an elaborate story
designed to show how fond he was of telling the truth. It was a boy’s way of manipulating
the world.’3

This biography is very pro-Darwin,
yet makes no effort to hide his failings, which are of course common in fallen
mankind. Desmond and Moore continue about the adult Darwin, ‘He craved recognition
from his fellow geologists [sic]—approval shored up his respectability—and
it drove him to finish the Beagle reports.’4 Darwin
wanted the spotlight; he wanted approval; he wanted recognition by his peers and
this was paramount in his mind. He could not abide the thought of Alfred Russel
Wallace (who thought of the same concept well after Darwin did) getting the evolutionary
glory before he did, so he went rapidly into print once the Wallace threat became
known to him.

Darwin did not invent, or discover, evolution; it was in the air at the time.

Darwin did not invent, or discover, evolution; it was in
the air at the time (see also "Darwin:
learning from Grandpa" this issue). He caught the mood, made it popular
and gave it credibility. The problem was that he had no real evidence
to support the change of one kind into another. There was ample evidence
of variety (perhaps even speciation) within a biological kind (to
use the biblical term, Genesis 1:11, 21, etc.) but no evidence at all for a reptile turning into
a bird, or a fish into an amphibian and so on. Also there was no evidence
for ape-like creatures having turned into human beings. The gaps in his
data did not deter him from developing his elaborate story. Was it a man’s
‘way of manipulating the world’? I suggest that his books
On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man were
not unrelated to his childhood inventiveness ‘for the pure pleasure
of exciting attention and surprise.’

As a child Darwin did not get away with his attempts at ‘manipulating the world.’
By 1859, when his first book came out, however, the world was faced with a cleverer
adult, capable of a more detailed attempt at manipulation than before. Darwin
may have deceived himself as well, and in fact probably did persuade himself that
evolution was true.

Darwin had several possible motives, perhaps
largely unconscious, for manipulating facts to suit the idea that the world evolved
(i.e. made itself). For one, if the Christian Bible was true, his unbelieving
deceased relatives were under eternal condemnation, which he called a ‘damnable
doctrine.’5

There were many unbelievers in 1859
who wanted to find a reason to deny the God who created us. They took to the lie
of evolution with alacrity.

Darwin’s elaborate attempt to
present himself as an unbiased scientist, whose only interest was to uncover truth
wherever that search may lead, paid off for him, and we today bear the consequences.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.